


Fighting Blues

by You_Light_The_Sky



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Don't copy to another site, EWE, F/M, Fluff, learning to heal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:01:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24280243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/You_Light_The_Sky/pseuds/You_Light_The_Sky
Summary: EWE. Harry doesn’t know how to be just Harry after the war. Luna invites him to travel with her around the world. They fall in love. For Talconhiro. COMPLETE.
Relationships: Luna Lovegood/Harry Potter
Comments: 38
Kudos: 219





	Fighting Blues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talconhiro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/talconhiro/gifts).



> The November 2019 fic I owe Talconhiro

**1 – fighting sleep**

No one wants to sleep after Voldemort is defeated apparently. No one but Harry, that is.

Students run around, shouting in joy, hugging each other and crying. Others sit down, dazed, unable to believe they’re free. Some of the professors welcome Ministry officials and reporters, trying to sort out the mess and hand out blankets and food. Other professors try to contact their families. Ron and Hermione haven’t stopped looking into each other’s eyes, haven’t stopped holding each other.

People won’t leave Harry alone, asking for an autograph, asking for a hug or a handshake, as if a touch from the one who defeated Voldemort will heal them and make things better.

It won’t. He’s not a savior. Not really. He was just so damn lucky and had the Elder wand at the right time and that’s it. That’s _it_.

But he shakes their hands anyways, because so many of them are so young, and they shouldn’t have had to go through this war. None of them should have.

His eyes begin to droop. His shoulders slump, but he forces a smile.

It’s Luna who pulls him away, waltzing into the crowd and taking his arm. She silences everyone’s inquiries with her dreamy smile, and says something about zipping zingles infecting the area, before she whisks Harry away to a quiet part of the castle.

“Where are we?” he asks, still tense, still _something_.

“My favourite spot near Ravenclaw tower. Hardly anyone wanders here. Sit.”

There’s a hidden corridor with a window that overlooks the courtyard and quidditch field, the forests and the mountains beyond. The window has a little nook where one can sit and curl up for a nap, various books, beads, and feathers are piled up against it, all Luna’s.

Harry stares through the window in awe. He forgot… how beautiful Hogwarts looks in the springtime, how the trees still grow so vibrantly, so green, compared to Private Drive.

“Sit,” Luna repeats again. “You should lie down.”

“What?”

“You’re nodding off, you haven’t slept in hours. Rest here. I’ll watch over you. I’ve been wanting to finish my book, and it’s going to be loud for quite some time so you should enjoy this.”

Harry blinks at her in a daze, not quite understanding. He never really understands Luna, and yet he feels as if he knows her, he can just _be_ around her.

“…Okay,” he nods, because Luna is safe, because Luna is right and he’s so _so_ tired. “Just for a little while.”

He leans against her, his head drooping down, and he sleeps to the sound of her voice reciting the properties of zinging zingles…

**2 – fighting nightmares**

Harry manages to negotiate a deal with Kreacher to have Lady Black’s portrait silenced during the night and then un-silenced during the day.

He still can’t sleep.

These rooms, these halls, these very ceilings kept Sirius Black trapped. And now they trap Harry. He can’t make himself look at the greying wallpaper or dusty clothes that Sirius once looked at. He can’t close his eyes without seeing Voldemort, seeing Hedwig falling to her death, Fred’s body…

In the mornings, Kreacher has the exciting task of chasing away owls that seek Harry out for interviews and help. He’s received so many requests to capture criminals, to banish ghouls, to fix political climates he has no experience in. If you defeated Voldemort, the letters seem to taunt, then why can’t you defeat this for us too?

Professor McGonagall too has firecalled, asking for Harry’s presence at school next year, for him to finish his seventh year or take up a temporary DADA position.

“It would soothe the students, give them a sense of closure, to see you teaching that particular class,” she says, though her tone implies that she would rather he didn’t. Her wrinkles have deepened and her face has become less stern. “But Potter, there is no pressure for you to take this position, please take all the time you need.”

But inside him, a voice like Snape’s sneers that he shouldn’t have any time at all.

Hermione and Ron stop by, trying to cheer him up with soup and help him sort out his affairs. But they come less and less, helping out their own families… Hermione trying to connect with her family again, Ron grieving Fred.

Harry drowns in his thoughts and dreams.

Luna comes knocking at his door in September, a briefcase in hand, as she says, “Would you like to come travelling with me?”

Without thinking, Harry says yes.

**3 – fighting normalcy**

“Are we apparating?” Harry asks, after hastily packing a bag of clothes and toiletries, and leaving Kreacher in charge of renovations for Grimmauld Place (“Make things… more cheery. In a way Regulus would have wanted.”)

“Oh _no_. How would we see the sights then? We’ll go the muggle way and take a car. Then horseback… maybe hippogriff for a while… magic carpet…”

“A car?” Harry doesn’t remember the last time he took a car. The Dursleys rarely took him anywhere willingly and the Ford Angela in Second Year had gone wild. “Do you know how to drive one?”

“Not in the slightest!” Luna grins, shrinking both of their bags. “But that’s what makes it so much fun! I hear muggles have drivers, we can ask one to take us to the most interesting place in England first and go from there!”

“But… _why?_ ” If he were with Hermione, she would talk about the importance of planning travels. Ron would worry about the financial budget.

Luna only shrugs and looks at him. “Aren’t you tired of asking _why_ , Harry? Don’t you just want to go where your heart leads and just _be?_ ”

He stares at her, starstruck. He’s always like that around her, speechless, and yet somehow Luna knows what he wants to say through it all.

Will he ever get to understand her like that? See her and just _know_ what she’s feeling?

(He wants to.)

He takes her hand and they go.

**4 – fighting expectations**

They get chased by a court of fairies for accidentally offending the queen in Ireland. They try ice cream in Italy, laughing when the magical flavours change their hair colours into cotton pink and neon blue. They hunt for wrackspurts in the Eiffel Tower and get interested in muggle ghost hunts, taking pictures with old cameras to find wisps of anything there. They set a trapped dragon free in India and help it find home, getting burnt for their pains, but grinning wildly at each other. They travel on top of giant lotus blossoms down Chinese rivers and enjoy swimming in Ha Long Bay in Vietnam.

They hike, travel by camel, scooter, magic carpet, bike, and more, and it’s so vivid, all the scenery that passes by them. Sometimes they stop for a break to try wild grapes or to see if they can pick new fruits at a local farm. Sometimes they stop to participate in local festivals, learning new dances and traditions to honour old gods.

Harry sees that magic around the world is so much more complicated and vaster than what he learned in Hogwarts. Not everyone uses wands, some cultures use voo doo or paper talismans or bond with a magical animal.

Through it all, Luna holds his hand, and when people ask if they’re a couple, Harry only replies that they’re just them. Harry and Luna.

They don’t let go.

**5 – fighting memories**

Around the world, they encounter so many festivals that honour the dead. Some cultures light lanterns, setting them on the water. Some cultures go back to grave sites and offer food and dancing. Some cultures set a huge bonfire and pray to the dead.

It’s yet their third encounter with such a festival, when Harry sees Luna with a solemn look on her face, staring at the fire.

Without speaking, he puts his arm around her, and offers a lantern.

“Should we light one?” he asks, “For your mother?”

Slowly, Luna nods.

“Yes, and for your parents too. And Fred and Dobby and Hedwig and Lupin and Tonks.”

He laughs. It no longer surprises him these days, how often he laughs around her.

“Then we’ll need more lanterns.”

She’s still so silent as he kneels with her to light up the lanterns, the fire making her hair glisten like starlight.

“Harry?”

“Yes, Luna?”

“Thank you. For finding me. During the war, when I was taken away from Daddy. _Thank you_.”

His throat feels thick with emotion. He suddenly finds it hard to speak, but he does, intertwining their fingers together. He hadn’t known that she was missing at the time, that she _cared_ so much for them. But he does now. And if anyone ever took her from him, he’d turn the world over sideways until he found her again.

“No, Luna. Thank _you_.”

She found _him_. She always finds him.

**6 – fighting joy**

It’s Winter Solstice when the letters catch up to Harry and Luna, when inquiries are made demanding to know where they are. People are worried, despite Kreacher’s assurances that Master Harry and Mistress Luna are safe.

Luna doesn’t react to any of the letters until she reads her father’s, reads how he misses her and wants her to come home. Her fingers tremble then.

“We should go back, at least for Yule,” she whispers. “As for later…”

Harry takes her hands, and holds them close against his chest. “We’ll think about later… later,” he says lamely. “Let’s go home.”

Strange how that word doesn’t feel the same anymore. Home, that is.

Harry wonders where his home is now, after Hogwarts and the war.

:

The Weasleys and Mr. Lovegood swarm them both when they arrive for Yule, bearing presents and souvenirs from their travels. Mr. Lovegood holds Luna close, lectures her for leaving him and what if she got kidnapped again, while Luna twitches but otherwise doesn’t complain. Harry’s hand feels empty without hers, as he watches Mr. Lovegood pull her away…

Hermione and Ron fill his ears with worry and love and expectations. When will he return to Hogwarts? When will he become an auror with Ron? When will he settle down? When will he respond to the press, calm down the public?

Harry excuses himself.

He doesn’t remember a Yule that was as cold as this one, as isolating.

:

He and Luna don’t get to talk for an entire week.

:

“I’m worried about you, Harry,” Hermione says. “I don’t mean to nag or frustrate you… I’m just _worried_. You don’t have any passions. You don’t seem to want to do anything. I don’t want you to have survived all this only to fall into this… this… _depression_.”

“I’m not depressed,” he denies.

She gives him a _look_.

“Okay, maybe I was depressed before. And I still am, a little. But I’m getting better. And I have _passion_. Me and Luna have been cataloguing all sorts of new magical creatures we’ve found, and I’ve been tutoring a student via firecall from Iraq named Asma, she’s lovely by the way, and I was thinking, that after all this, maybe Luna and I could go to Australia next or South America… maybe we can find that snake I set on Dudley a long time ago… What? What is it?”

Hermione’s eyes are wide and her mouth open in a tiny little ‘o.’

“Nothing, nothing, just… you should have told me that you were dating. I’m so happy for you, Harry. This is a big step!”

Harry’s mind stops. “Dating? Oh, we’re not dating.”

Hermione stares.

“I care about her, and she’s… she’s important to me, but… we’re not dating. We’re just… us. I…”

Oh.

**7 – embracing you**

Harry runs out on the conversation with Hermione into the snow, running from the Burrow towards Luna’s house. The snow brushes against his hair, he probably looks half-frozen, but he has to let Luna know because he doesn’t want anything to change, but keeping the feelings inside would be dishonest, and he and Luna just _know_ things about each other, and he _does want to change_ , Luna makes him want to change and be better and be _Harry_ , not just the Harry that others expect, but his version of Harry—

He’s at her house, and he sees her there in her front yard, building little ice sculptures that are just as breathtaking as her paintings. The sculptures take his breath away.

Hedwig, immortalized in ice, settling on ice-Harry’s shoulder with a fond look in her eyes. Fred laughing as Tonks and Remus look shyly at each other, their smiles twinkling in the sun. And his parents, the way he’d like to think they’d look, if they ever welcomed him home from a long day at school. And a woman, with the same dreamy smile as Luna, only older and aged by kindness. All of these people, crafted lovingly in ice.

“…Amazing,” he breathes.

Luna turns around in surprise.

“Harry!” she beams at him. “I’m sorry I haven’t visited or written. Daddy wanted to spend time with me before we travel again. I was thinking we could go to South America and see if we can find that snake you talked about—”

“I love you,” he blurts out, because he has to say it, she has to know, all of him put back together is because he loves her.

She stares at him in surprise.

“I love you,” he says again, in case she didn’t hear. “I love you so much, all of you, all of your thoughts and the way you see the world, and how you care and breathe, I _love_ you.”

Gods, he’s botching this up. He can’t say the most important things, but she _has to know_ —

She actually tears up, stepping closer and closer, her hand pressed against his heart. “I know. I love you too.”

He looks at her in wonder.

Snowflakes gently fall between them, the flurries blowing them closer together.

“I think the snow wants us to kiss now,” Luna declares.

Harry smiles. “Then we shouldn’t let it down.”

Their lips touch under the day’s first snow.

:

Harry doesn’t become a DADA professor or politician or auror. But he does become Luna’s. And she becomes his.

That’s enough.


End file.
